The STRUCTURAL RECIPE calls for opening with the single most-cited work, but the FACTS list contains no work titles at all. Following the Evidence Lock rule, this bio opens instead with the earliest high-confidence fact that defines Drummond's identity.

William Drummond was a poet, writer, and historian born in 1585 in Midlothian, a citizen of the Kingdom of Scotland who worked in the English language. He received his early education at the Royal High School, and his career spanned the roles of poet, writer, and historian across the decades of his working life. The combination of those three occupations gives some sense of the range he maintained, moving between verse and other forms of writing without settling into a single mode.

His education at the Royal High School was the formal beginning of a life spent with language and ideas. Born in Midlothian, he remained connected to Scotland throughout his life, producing his work in English while remaining a Scottish citizen. The fact that he worked across poetry, general writing, and history suggests he engaged with both imaginative and documentary ways of understanding the world, though the specific titles and projects he pursued are not recorded in the available record here.

Drummond died in 1649 at Hawthornden Castle. He had been born in 1585, giving him a lifespan that stretched across one of the more turbulent periods in Scottish and British history, though the details of how that context shaped his work lie beyond what the current record confirms. What the record does confirm is that he was a poet and historian who used the English language and was educated at the Royal High School in Midlothian.

He died on 4 December 1649 at Hawthornden Castle. The facts that anchor his biography most firmly are his birth in Midlothian in 1585, his education at the Royal High School, his occupations as poet, writer, and historian, his use of the English language, and his death at Hawthornden Castle in 1649.